Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region

Sara PlourdeNHPR

New Hampshire's Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee region, situated along the Vermont border in the Connecticut River watershed, encompasses the Upper Valley and Lake Sunapee sub-regions.

In the Upper Valley, the communities of Lebanon and Hanover form the heart of the region’s economy. Lebanon is home to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, while Hanover hosts the Ivy League Dartmouth College. But although they share a regional identity, economically speaking, Lebanon and Hanover are very different. Compared to Lebanon–and the state as a whole–Hanover skews wealthy. The US Census Bureau has found that while the average household income in New Hampshire is $78,208, the average household income in Hanover is $139,881. Lebanon, meanwhile, reports a lower average income at $69,853.

Despite its prosperity, the Upper Valley faces its own set of challenges. Affordable housing, for example, can be hard to find for working class and middle-income workers, and pollution in the Connecticut River is also a concern for the area.

The Lake Sunapee region is known primarily for its tourist attractions and outdoor recreation, centered around Lake Sunapee and Mount Sunapee, though it has a history as a manufacturing district. The outflow of Lake Sunapee, the Sugar River, once powered several paper and textile mills. The departure of these industries has left the economic picture of the region somewhat bleak. In the Sunapee region’s only city, Claremont, average household income is $50,839, well below the state average.

A study out of Dartmouth suggests New Hampshire is making good progress in the fight against prostate cancer.

New Hampshire doctors are increasingly doing what the medical community recommends: treating high-risk prostate cancer with surgery and radiation, but leaving low-risk cancer alone, and simply monitoring it.

A Dartmouth College fraternity that partly inspired the 1978 movie "Animal House" and was recently accused of branding new members is appealing a campus judiciary committee's decision to withdraw its recognition as a student organization.

The Lebanon Municipal Airport has missed out on getting $750,000 for improvements, after the city failed to have a plan in place.

The Valley News reports the airport receives $1 million each year from the federal Essential Air Service Program when at least 10,000 people depart from it. The $750,000 is what's left of Lebanon's 2012 allocation.

If the airport doesn't spend that money within three years, it's dispersed to other airports in the region.

A Canadian company has purchased a New Hampshire pork products producer, but the company says the sale shouldn’t affect the 35 jobs at its facility in Claremont.

Bacon makes up 80 percent of North Country Smokehouse’s business, but it also puts out some sausage, ham, and smoked cheeses. According to the company’s president, Mike Satzow, it gets much of their pork from a Canadian company that’s buying them, Les Spécialités Prodal.

“They are the largest producers of organic and natural pork on the continent,” says Satzow.

The city of Claremont has been chosen to receive a grant of nearly $478,000 from the New Hampshire Transportation Department to improve sidewalks and upgrade a rail trail for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The Eagle Times reports final approval for the grant would come from the Executive Council. The city would be responsible for nearly $120,000 in matching funds.

The Transportation Department expects the project to begin this summer.

More than 800 people packed the Hopkins Center to see President Hanlon’s unveil proposals to reform Dartmouth’s social culture. Most of his remarks focused on liquor, which Hanlon called a serious risk to campus safety.

Hanlon also called for reforms to the fraternity system and said starting next fall freshmen will be assigned to live in residential communities led by professors.

Senior Taylor Payer says she welcomes Hanlon’s promise to get tougher on sexual assaults on campus but says true change will require more drastic measures.

Classes are back in session at Dartmouth College, which means winter recruitment for fraternities and sororities is getting underway. It’s been a controversial year for Greek life from Clemson University to Johns Hopkins, and Dartmouth has not escaped unscathed. Later this month, recommendations addressing social life are expected to be publicly released.

Dartmouth College has charged 64 students accused of cheating in a sports ethics class with violating the Ivy League school's honor code.

College officials confirmed the number of students charged but declined to comment further until the appeals process ends later this month. Professor Randall Balmer told the Valley News that most of the students involved have been suspended for a term.

State health officials say in the highly unlikely event any Ebola patients are identified in New Hampshire, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon has agreed to accept them.

The Department of Health and Human Services says each of the state’s 26 hospitals are prepared to identify and isolate a potential Ebola patient, but that long-term care would be better managed at the Lebanon hospital, or a designated national center.

Outside of three cases in Dallas, Texas, no one in the U.S. has been diagnosed with Ebola.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock is working to stem the spread of scabies at its Lebanon facility. The infectious but non-fatal skin condition has been found in two people so far.

The first was a patient who arrived at the hospital in mid-August with a number of health conditions. That patient, who’s still in the hospital, wasn’t diagnosed with scabies until late September. Since then one Dartmouth staff member has been diagnosed and treated.

A plan to make the Monadnock region one of the healthiest communities in the country has received a financial boost from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded $1.1 million to Healthy Monadnock 2020, an initiative of Cheshire Medical Center-Dartmouth Hitchcock Keene. The hospital is working with schools, farmers and other private and public entities to prevent some of the leading causes of death, such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

A new study out of Dartmouth tracks a rise in healthcare costs across northern New England. It is not exactly surprising data. But what is new is that the information is even available.

Between 2008 and 2010, people on private insurance in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont saw healthcare costs climb by 4.5 percent annually.

For just shy of a decade, northern New England states have required insurance companies to report how much they pay for services like blood tests and X-rays. That’s important because, historically, these data lived in the dark.

Some of the biggest technology companies in the world are on a chase for what some consider the holy grail of the information age: Quantum computing. And some of that research is going on right there in New Hampshire. But one big challenge is to get the quantum bits to dance how we want them to.

Before getting too high-tech, let's go back to 1938. A brilliant physicist, an Italian named Ettore Majorana, withdraws all his money from a bank and boards a boat. Then, somewhere between Palermo and Naples, he vanishes without a trace.

Representatives from Dartmouth College, UNH, and advocacy groups joined Democratic Congresswoman Ann McLane Kuster for a roundtable discussion about campus sexual assault today. The event at UNH Law in Concord focused on new legislation introduced in the US Senate.

Dartmouth President Phillip Hanlon joins us tomorrow to discuss changes and challenges at the college during his first year, from a new plan to deal with a sexual assault problem that has drawn federal scrutiny, to Hanlon’s plans to expand graduate programs and deal with the ongoing issue of affordability.

GUESTS:

Philip Hanlon – Dartmouth alum of the Class of ’77, award-winning math professor at University of Michigan and current president of Dartmouth College.

Dartmouth College’s Abbey D’Agostino is turning pro now that her celebrated collegiate running career has come to an end. In four years at Dartmouth D’Agostino became one of the Ivy League’s all-time most accomplished. To learn more about her career and what lies ahead, I spoke to David Monti, editor and publisher of the New York based Race Results Weekly:

This is an athlete that took a lot of people by surprise. What were the expectations when she first came to Dartmouth and what did she end up accomplishing?

Susy Struble was a 16-year-old high school student when, during a weekend visit to Dartmouth College, she was raped at an off-campus party.

Like many rape victims, Struble chose not to tell anyone about the assault, and two years later, she was back at Dartmouth as a student.

One night during her freshman year, she opened her door to a tall, sandy-haired man. Obviously drunk, he forced his way in, pushed Struble against the wall and tried to kiss her. Struble was able to fend off her attacker, who she realized was the same man who had raped her two years earlier.

A longstanding legal dispute between the operators of Mount Sunapee Resort and the New Hampshire officials who blocked expansion plans is on trial once again.

A lawyer for the resort operators says state officials misled them into thinking they could expand and build condominiums when the state leased the ski area portion of the state park to the Sunapee Difference LLC in 1998.

The Concord Monitor reports the lawyer argued Monday his clients lost millions in potential revenues.

About 35 students staged a sit-in in Dartmouth President Philip Hanlon’s office Tuesday. They have been pressuring the College to increase enrollment of black, Latino and Native American students to at least 10 percent each, and to hire more faculty from minority groups. The 70 monetary demands outlined in their “Freedom Budget” also include sweeping changes in the curriculum, financial aid, and residential life programs.

A jury is deliberating the case of a former Dartmouth College student accused of raping a female student inside her dorm room.

Last May, Hanover police arrested then-20-year-old Parker Gilbert, a freshman from London, on multiple counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault. The arrest followed a complaint from a female student who said she was attacked after Gilbert entered her unlocked dorm room.

Parker pleaded not guilty and the defense argued the sexual encounter was consensual. A judge dropped two of the charges this week.